This story is 100% true... none of the names or places have been changed to protect anyone or anything.
That's just how I roll.
1. SACRAMENTO BLUES
Sometime in mid-1980, I found myself at loose ends. It happens.
Having separated from my soon-to-be-ex-wife, I used a job transfer while working for a hydraulics distributor to move to Northern California to work the service counter at their West Sacramento branch. My new gig was to intake mud-caked valves and shit-covered pumps for the area's rice farmers, sketchy manufacturing plants and even sketchier service techs.
I'd found a small apartment in the nondescript suburb of Citrus Heights, directly across from the Birdcage Mall, a nondescript indoor shopping cavern that I avoided like the plague. I had also bought a very clean 1971 AMC Ambassador from the family of an old dead guy who had cherished that sled. It was Yellow with a black vinyl top and constantly reminded me that everything eventually dies.
For reasons that escape me now, I lost my job and spent the next few months working as a temp all over the valley. Sometime during that period, I also had to sell the dead guy's Ambassador so I could pay my rent. I did a lot of walking, hitchhiking and riding the buses that never ran on time.
(I later found out that because the notorious Folsom State Prison paroled prisoners directly into the local area, anyone who made a habit of hitching rides was probably going to get murdered sooner rather than later. I didn't get murdered, so yay for me.)
After a month of being non-vehicular, my neighbor Kevin mentioned that he was going to a State auction to buy a car for his girlfriend who lived in Redding. This was news because he was living in the apartment next door with his wife Karen... Kevin had seeeeecrets. With a serious wad of $100 to spend, I went along with him on the following Saturday morning.
We drove into downtown Sacramento and found the auction lot filled with cars, trucks, buses, forklifts, heavy equipment, trailers and every type of State-owned conveyance. We found the auto corral and walked up and down the long rows of cars that would be up for bid. Most of them were in decent shape and well outside my price range, and after an hour I figured I'd be outta luck finding anything to bid on.
That's when we came upon The Matador. It was the last car in a long row, with the passenger side directly up against the chain link fence separating the corrals.
At first glance, this wasn't a car anyone would want. Vintage 1972 AMC four-door bathed in Institutional Green. The hood was dented, the grill was broken, and both driver-side doors were caved in. On the plus side, the rest of the sheet metal was in perfect condition. It had good tires with matching wheel covers, twin A-pillar mounted spotlights, and the interior was decent.
I mean, how much could they want for this thing, right?
I got inside and was hit with the stench of old beer. I turned the ignition key and it started right up, the engine running so smoothly I wasn't sure it was actually running. I lowered all the windows and sat in there, thinking it wasn't as bad as it first seemed. Hell, even the A/C and radio worked! The odometer showed a reasonable 80,000+ miles, much less than the wrinkled exterior would indicate.
After a few hours of car grazing and a really bad roach coach burrito, we walked over to the auction area for the bidding. Kevin was interested in a couple of cars but nothing really looked promising to me. About a dozen cars rolled through the auction and were quickly snapped up before The Matador rolled in, with the damaged side and nose most prominent.
The Auctioneer quickly read off the car's stats and then said "Bidding on this car starts at $50." I stood there waiting but no one bid on it! Maybe it was the exterior damage and 'that color', but nope... silence. I looked around for a few seconds and then raised my hand.
"$50 bid from that young man... do I hear a raise?"
Nothing.
"No more bids? OK, the bid is $50 going once... going twice... SOLD!"
I had a car! I followed it to the Sales trailer, gave them the $50 plus another $5 for the admin fees and walked out with the pink slip. Kevin was outbid on all the cars he'd wanted, and I drove my bitchin' new old car back to Citrus Heights with the windows all down to air out the stench.
2. MIDNIGHT EXPRESS
Shortly after I bought The Matador, everything went to crap.
The apartment property managers announced our complex would soon be turned into condos and anyone who wasn't planning to buy would have to move out in 30 days, and I was already a month behind in rent.
I was broke and my new job at a surveying equipment store wouldn't pay enough for me to cover the back rent, so I made an executive decision: I was gonna skip town in the middle of the night and head back to L.A.
On my last day in the Sacramento delta, I went to work and lied to the owner about an overdue child support payment and convinced him to give me an advance on my next paycheck. It was a terrible thing to do, but desperate people yatta yatta yatta.
(To this day, I'm still ashamed of lying to my Boss and taking his money.)
That same night and with $150 in my wallet, I quickly loaded as much of my shit as possible into The Matador, leaving behind all the furniture. I had to slide the front bench seat all the way forward to fit everything, and the suspension was so overloaded the car looked like an insane homeless guy's lowrider.
The whole time I was loading the car, I fretted about the one obstacle that could botch my plan: the Southbound I-5 Grapevine Pass incline, rising to 4,100 feet above the San Joaquin Valley floor. In my mind, that steep roadway loomed large as a car-killer, and knowing The Matador was overloaded and old and all, I was almost certain that it wouldn't survive the climb. Now out of options, I figgered it was worth the risk.
The last thing I loaded was my cat Dinky, a jet-black refugee that a neighbor left behind when she moved away. I'd set up a small litter box on the rear floor for him, but once inside the car he buried himself somewhere in the loaded rear seat and began to howl with displeasure.
With Dinky continuously howling somewhere in the back seat and me jammed up against the steering wheel in front, I slowly pulled away from the apartment parking lot, the car's suspension bottoming out every so often to remind me of what was going to be a fretful trip.
The long drive down Highway 99 through the dark night was filled with dread, even though The Matador seemed to be cruising along A-OK. Around 3am I pulled into a gas station outside Bakersfield to fuel up. I was resigned to whatever might happen during the run up the Pass, with visions of exploding water hoses and clouds of black smoke filling my mind's eye. Dinky never once stopped howling the entire trip, he was SO MAD.
I finished fueling and pulled out onto the freeway, and after a few minutes I could see the line of red tail lights in the distance, all negotiating the steep Grapevine climb.
Cruising at about 65mph, with the incline getting closer and closer, I started to panic. Had I made a really stupid mistake by trying this midnight run in a $50 car? What am I gonna do if the car breaks down halfway up the slope? Who would stop at 3am to help someone driving an insane homeless guy lowrider Matador?
I flashed past the tiny burg of Grapevine and started up the hill. It looked like a vertical wall of roadway but I was committed and knew it was boom or bust. As the hill got steeper, I gently pressed the accelerator and The Matador shifted down a gear and picked up speed.
For the next 15 uphill minutes, I was in a frenzy but shouldn't have been. That fucking car just CRUISED up the Grapevine incline, keeping a constant speed, shifting down every so often but then back again, not missing a beat. By the time I made it to Fort Tejon and over the summit, I was whooping and shouting and crying and laughing, all at once. Oh, and Dinky was still howling in back, not realizing how lucky we both were.
The dark early-morning downhill roll into Castaic, through the San Fernando Valley and all the way to the San Gabriel Valley was a blur of emotion, exhaustion, exhilaration and the expectation that no matter what happened next, I'd be OK.
The Matador came through.
I pulled into my Mom's driveway in Arcadia at around 6am, turned off the car and with Dinky still howling, fell asleep. I woke up about an hour later, got out and checked my Institutional Green 1972 AMC Matador. It still looked like an insane homeless guy's lowrider, but it was bee-yootiful.
$55, well-spent.
3. THE END
I never did register The Matador, not in Sacramento or the entire time I drove it in SoCal. I'd semi-repaired the caved-in doors and bent the hood back into shape right after I bought it, so the car appeared official and screamed "NARC!!!" right down to the twin spotlights and that color. In fact, I'd be driving to work in my shirt and tie and sunglasses and a cop would cruise up next to me, we'd meet eyes and he'd always give me the head nod and keep on going. I could have smuggled guns and drugs in that car and no one would have been the wiser.
I stupidly got back together with my soon-to-be-ex-wife about a month after my return to SoCal, and she hated The Matador so much she refused to ride in it, which was fine with me. One day I bought some matte black spray paint and sprayed 'THE CLASH' in huge letters across both the wrinkled driver-side doors, complete with a giant black star. That made her hate it even more, and somehow I never got stopped for having no plates or registration. I did get lots of honks and thumbs-up from other drivers.
After a few months of daily 80-mile round trips between our Covina apartment and my job in Rancho Dominguez, The Matador started running rough. One morning the engine was really struggling to stay running. I popped the hood and smelled hot fluids, so I checked the oil and noticed it was watery and light brown, a sure sign of water in the oil (which is BAD), prolly a cracked block or a blown head gasket. Realizing the car wouldn't be reliable enough for the long daily commute any more, it had to go.
One problem: I'd never registered the car and even though I had the pink slip, it would be difficult to sell with a mortally wounded engine. I located a wrecking yard that would take the car and title, no questions asked, so with my s-t-b-e-w (and 3-year-old daughter) following me in her '72 VW Fastback, I drove The Matador to a location deep in an industrial area of Monrovia. The yard guy looked over the car and offered me $100 cash for it. We traded title and keys for cash and left in the VW, and I watched in the rear-view mirror as the guy got into The Matador and drove it into the back.
After all that, I'd doubled the money I paid for The Matador.
EPILOGUE
About 6 months after The Matador went to its Great Reward, my relationship with the s-t-b-e-w crashed and I found myself sleeping on the couch. One Saturday morning while she was out with our daughter in the VW (our only car), I decided to take a walk and clear my head. I left our Covina apartment and headed West, not really thinking about where I was going... and I kept on walking.
After a couple of hours of Westward trekking, I realized I was halfway to Mom's house in Arcadia so... I just kept on walking. I wound up walking 15 miles to her house, spent the night there and she loaned me her sweet Blue '74 Camaro to use for a few days.
I drove back to Covina the next afternoon and discovered the s-t-b-e-w had removed all of my belongings from the apartment and dumped them on the curb for the next day's garbage pickup. I scrambled for my clothes, audio gear and record collection and stuffed it all into the Camaro, with the s-t-b-e-w holding our daughter and screaming at me for being a piece of shit. I had to slide the driver seat all the way forward to fit my stuff in back, so I jammed myself behind the steering wheel and drove away.
I spent most of the night just driving around, winding up parked in the driveway of my good buddy Jerry's house in La Puente at around 2am. I shoved the seat back as far as I could and fell asleep until his Mom came out around 6am, knocking on the window to wake me up, dragging me into the house for some breakfast.
I was once again broke and at loose ends, but the story would eventually have a happy ending.
*************************************************************************
I think about The Matador every now and again, amazed that it cost so little but was such a reliable ride and really saved my bacon. The days of being able to buy and drive a $50 car are long-gone, and I've developed a weird appreciation for AMC vehicles... especially Pacers.
In fact, just a few years after The Matador left me I was lucky enough to buy a recently-repaired 1962 Rambler American 2-door from my friend Tim's Dad, and it was basically the same color as The Matador. Three-on-the-tree shifter, an OHC 6-cylinder engine with electric overdrive, bench seat... that sled could cruise at 80mph in overdrive. The first real road trip The Artist and I took in it was to Northern California, including a run through Sacramento.
She really didn't like the American's color that much, but I thought it was bee-yootiful.
(Not the The American, but the exact same make/model/year/beautiful color.)
Sometimes, it's the little things in life that can make the biggest difference. Things like a $50 car, a can of black spray paint, a long walk or even an overnight drive. You just never know what they'll bring to your conscious existence, which always becomes richer as a result.
No comments:
Post a Comment